


nostrum

by klutzysurgeon



Category: Mushishi
Genre: Broken Bones, Gen, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Minor Injuries, Misunderstandings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 07:00:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13782231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/klutzysurgeon/pseuds/klutzysurgeon
Summary: sometimes a cure isn't wanted, sometimes healing is a little more than physical; ginko's help goes unappreciated by the villagers and adashino patches him up in the aftermath





	nostrum

Sometimes, Ginko comes to him injured.

It’s not too surprising. For one thing, Adashino is a doctor; most people only ever come to him if they’re injured or sick, it’s what he’s here for. He's seen everything from the common cold to farming accidents to the death of infants and elderly alike, and he'd like to think he's fairly used to it all. Not  _immune,_ not all-knowing, but hard to surprise, surely. Beyond that, Ginko is a wanderer, prone to travelling across rocky mountains and slippery riverbanks, so a broken bone or a twisted ankle or even a sharp rock driven into some unfortunate bit of flesh isn’t unexpected.

Even so, Ginko limping in on a branch with a broken leg, a swollen jaw and three sloppily-bandaged wounds is not exactly what Adashino would call a typical workday.

He barely gets a chance to stand up— nearly tripping over his own feet, with eyes wide and adrenaline flowing— before Ginko leans against his door frame with a half-coughed “Yo” and promptly collapses on his floor.

 

//

 

“What the _hell_ did you  _do_ _?”_ may not be the best thing to blurt at a patient who’s only just woken up, but nonetheless, Adashino feels entitled to it. Ginko _did_ bleed all over his floor, after all.

“Ah,” Ginko mumbles, staring blearily up at him from the futon. “I’m still alive. That’s good."

“Of course you’re still alive,” Adashino frowns. He knows that Ginko is always nonchalant, but he's never had a patient seem so flippant about their life. "You weren't injured enough to die."

Ginko hums some sort of acknowledgement, letting his eye slide closed. “How badly injured was I?”

"Your leg was the worst of it." Adashino settles down onto the floor beside the bedroll, lightly prodding the splint he'd fashioned. The motion earns a faint grimace and he makes a note to give Ginko some painkillers now that he's conscious. "You're lucky it was a clean break. It should heal on its own without much trouble, but you won't be getting out of bed for awhile."

"And the rest?"

"Your jaw was swollen, but not dislocated or fractured. Most of the swelling went down while you slept— feel any loose teeth?" He can see the movement as Ginko moves his tongue around, prodding around his mouth before shaking his head. "Good. Your wounds were shallow, but I stitched the deepest one anyway just to avoid the trouble of you opening it when you get out of bed in an hour."

“‘M not getting out of bed,” Ginko mumbles, though he doesn’t try very hard to sound believable. “...How long is _awhile?”_

Adashino opens his mouth to respond and stops just short of the standard answer he would give.  _Two months_ is what he should say— two months is how long it takes for the bone to mend, but he knows Ginko enough to know that such a long stretch of time will only scare him off. “Wait a week,” Adashino eventually says, with slow and careful words. “I’ll get you a decent pair of crutches, and you’ll practice using them then. Two weeks and I might be able to let you leave.”

It's far too soon to be traipsing off in the woods with a broken leg, but it's the most he thinks he can push for. Two weeks is exactly ten days longer than Ginko has ever stayed, and that was the time he fractured a rib slipping down a mountain trail and slamming into a tree at the bottom.

He’d told Ginko to stay a month— it could take six weeks, he’d said, but they’d monitor it— and on the morning of the fifth day Adashino woke to find a neatly made futon. The mushi-shi didn’t return for six months afterwards and neither of them spoke a word on it; there’s no point lecturing him. They are equally stubborn on their own obsessions: Ginko, with travelling, and himself, with his collection.

But this is more serious than a fractured rib and for all that Adashino may be skilled as a doctor, there isn't much he can do for a corpse.

Ginko frowns. "I can’t stay that long.”

“I see.”

Adashino stands, walking over to his medicine box and pulling out a simple block of wood. “Bite this, then,” he says, offering it out to Ginko who opens his eye to stare in confusion.

“Why?”

“Because I’m going to break your other leg.”

The silence seems to stretch on for several minutes, Ginko blinking owlishly a few times as Adashino continues to hold out the block. “...You can’t be serious,” Ginko says, though the worried way he shifts himself up onto one elbow hints at doubt.

"If you try to leave like this, you'll die," Adashino bluntly states. “A broken leg should take two months. Crutches on a mountain are riskier than normal climbing, and even that can be deadly. You’re lucky I’d risk letting you leave in two weeks with them, but if I have to break your other leg to make sure you don’t go and get yourself killed, I will, Ginko."

Adashino's voice is calm enough, bluffing skill born from countless bratty patients. Oddly, it's almost always the elders who act like this, too eager to assume they know best; at least the children, while bratty, have _some_ respect. He's never been willing to let a patient make themselves worse and that last time had haunted him all those months, wondering if Ginko had gotten himself hurt even worse after leaving. Maybe he doesn’t want that responsibility on his hands, or the thought of never hearing more stories and seeing more goods is saddening. Maybe it's just his general moral compass as a doctor.

Maybe he just doesn’t want his friend to die. Sometimes the simplest answer is the right one.

Either way, his bluff wins out and he's relieved when Ginko lays back down with a sigh. “Aren’t you supposed to be a _doctor?”_ Ginko accuses, exasperated. “Bad ethics to injure your patients, don’t you think?”

“I _am_ a doctor,” Adashino sniffs, looking offended. “I save lives. Don’t be so picky.”

 _“Picky,”_ Ginko repeats. He doesn’t say anything else, letting his eye close again. He brings a hand up to rest on one of his wounds, feeling at the smooth gauze underneath his shirt with a wince.

Adashino is fairly certain this isn’t the first time the mushi-shi has ever been stabbed, but it is the first time Adashino himself has ever had to treat Ginko for anything that wasn't accidental. "Oi, you never answered my question. How did you get injured this time? Was it mushi?"

Ginko is quiet for such a long time Adashino wonders if he's fallen asleep, breathing slow and even. He's just about to ask again when Ginko speaks, “I’ll tell you if you give me some painkillers.”

"Deal," Adashino agrees immediately. He was going to, anyway— that works out perfectly, but Ginko doesn't need to know that. It takes him a few minutes to get everything ready, rooting around in his cabinets to find the right leaves and setting them to steep in a cup of hot water.

Ginko watches him as he moves, taking in the familiar room. It never changes much; Adashino is too lazy to ever remodel, and what little furniture he has is well-worn. There’s a few scrolls strewn about and a mess of clothes off to one corner, and Ginko spots his luggage sitting near it. “...You didn’t go through my drawers, did you?”

Adashino freezes, hand still in the drawer, putting away the herbs he didn't use. “...No-”

“Adashino.”

“...-t all of them.”

_“Adashino.”_

“Just two!” Adashino whines. He stares longingly at the box, fingers twitching. “How am I supposed to resist when you’re keeping so much from me?”

“The only things I’m keeping from you are the tools I need to work and the things that may potentially kill you,” Ginko says, tone dry. “You really shouldn’t be so interested in the mushi."

It’s the same old warning as always, said out of routine at this point more than any belief that the doctor will actually listen. “How could I not be?” Adashino wonders. “They’re so- so- _fascinating!_

“They’re dangerous, too.”

“So are people.”

In the silence that follows, Ginko shifts his broken leg and says nothing.

Adashino helps Ginko sit up more properly, handing him the cup of tea and sitting down next to him, staring expectantly. “You’ll probably be disappointed,” Ginko warns. “None of these wounds were caused by mushi."

"But they were involved, right?" It's hard to imagine a story from Ginko that doesn't involve those creatures; they follow him and he finds them, a constant cycle. The thought that his injuries aren't from mushi isn't very pleasant, but Adashino isn't terribly surprised. His village is peaceful, but Adashino has still had to treat a few knife wounds from accidents and arrow wounds from hunting incidents and Ginko’s shallow wounds looked very much like the latter; very much from humans.

"They were," Ginko sighs. "The mushi were affecting a village. I suppose I pushed the villagers a little too hard, but I don't think they would have listened to reason. Have you heard rumors of a fountain of youth?”

"No?" Adashino pauses, mulling it over. A fountain of youth… The other mushi-shi don’t tell him as many stories, more focused on their bartering than indulging his fascinations. “Oh! I have heard of a mushi that supposedly makes people into children, though. That one? Or a different one? Tell me about both either way,” he pushes, eyes full of childlike curiosity.

Ginko stares at him witheringly but there’s a curve to his lips he can’t fight, amusement showing. “That’s the one. It’s an Orokamono no Kawa— Fool’s River. It looks like a stream of gold bubbling up from the ground and it will return whoever drinks it to their childhood state, around nine or ten years old. However, it isn’t really turning back time; though it reduces the person’s visible age, it cuts their lifespan roughly in half.”

He tries to imagine it— a river of gold that can turn people into children. "So they stay young… but they’ll die sooner?” Adashino questions, unable to keep the wonder out of his voice. It sounds bad and he’s sure it is but just to know that such a thing _exists_ is endlessly fascinating. “Wouldn’t that still be useful for the elderly? So that they could die young instead.”

“Maybe,” Ginko allows. “But it wasn’t just the elderly making use of it. Everyone had drank it. The entire village was made up of what looked like children, and most of them had forgotten how old they were supposed to be. They died at unexpected times, some sooner than others if their natural lifespan was shorter, and the village was starting to collapse as they had the physical strength of ten year olds as well. Building houses and the like was nearly impossible, and they tired of tending to the crops much faster.”

Adashino leans back on his hands, letting out a low whistle. “That sounds… Messy.”

Ginko grimaces. "You could say that. But the villagers saw it as a blessing— the adults, at least." His expression darkens, something unfamiliar to the doctor. "The children couldn't tell their friends from their parents. Some had forgotten who their parents were. Almost all of them were being neglected because the parents couldn't or wouldn't act like adults. They had no intention to stop using the fountain, so I got rid of it myself."

“And the villagers tried to kill you for it,” Adashino fills in. The thought of a horde of children chasing Ginko out of their village is nearly funny if not for the very real injuries he’s still sporting, pale skin _too_ pale at the moment. “A bit much, isn’t it?”

“It was their treasure,” Ginko shrugs. He finishes the last of his herbal tea and sets the mug on the floor, laying back down and tugging the blanket around him despite the summer’s heat. “The leg is my own fault, anyway. I tripped down the mountain trail as I was leaving.”

“Hardly your own fault,” Adashino scoffs. “You were being chased. And you don’t snap a leg clean in half from _tripping.”_

“I may have tripped off the side of the mountain.”

The answer is so mundane that Adashino can only stare. After all the mushi involvement, the angry villagers, and every other incident he’s been in, it’s a simple slip off the mountain that put him in the worst state Adashino has ever seen him in. Maybe it shouldn’t be surprising but it is, somehow, to see Ginko so injured. Sometimes the mushi-shi seems a little more than human, a little ethereal, semipermanent in a way that makes it hard to realize he can still get injured, could still die out there.

And really, Adashino wouldn’t know if he did.

"...Hey, Ginko?"

"Mm?"

"It wasn't your fault," Adashino repeats. "You did the right thing."

Ginko's eyebrows raise, partially obscured by his mess of hair. "I'd have thought you'd wanted to keep the mushi."

"Well,  _I_ would want to keep it," he mutters. "But it wasn't good for the village. The kids will probably be glad for its absence. Or _their_ kids will, when they get to grow up with actual parents. People's greed isn't your fault."

The room fills with an easy silence again, Adashino's words hanging in the air for seconds, minutes. There's no response and Ginko's eye is closed again but at this point Adashino is only certain that he  _can't_ be certain if Ginko is asleep so he waits, pouring himself a cup of tea (and very nearly grabbing the wrong herbs for his own cup) and he finally gets a response as he takes his first sip, so quiet he nearly misses it. "Thank you."

"It's what I'm here for," Adashino shrugs. "And you're paying me properly for all the treatment too, you hear me? Oi, Ginko—"

An incoherent murmur is the only response he gets this time: Ginko really is half-asleep, the medicine finally taking effect. Adashino sighs, left alone to his thoughts in the quiet house. Later, he'll have to ask the villagers to craft him a sturdier set of crutches for the mushi-shi to use, and tomorrow he'll change out the dressings on the wounds and re-check the leg brace. It might not hurt to pick some herbs for infection, either, since his body will be weak for awhile. The hardest part will just be convincing Ginko to stay; and maybe badgering him for stories, now that he's stuck here for awhile.

Still, for all that he can do, he thinks those words may have done more healing than all his medicine ever could.

Adashino shrugs to himself, sipping his tea with an easy smile. Either way, so long as Ginko heals, that's good enough for him.

**Author's Note:**

> fic inspired by a very very old [livejournal request](http://fic-on-demand.livejournal.com/971560.html) i stumbled across while looking up mushishi stuff and while i don't know if the request ever got filled or even if the person still likes mushishi all these years later, i really wanted to write this, though i know i probably took it in a different direction, ahah... let me know how i did; mushishi and its characters are so hard to get a grasp on, but i intend to write more.
> 
> またいつか


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